Open for Questions Tag Cloud

Q&A: Search Engine Traffic and Blog Post Frequency

From great comments and questions comes great fodder for blog posts.

The first question comes from yesterday’s post on search engines. Chris asks:

But webmaster, your stats seem to indicate that 99.7% of our traffic comes from a search engine. Aren’t there some visitors that just come here because they know about us already? Or, what about someone like me that has a page in the www.bus.wisc.edu domain set as their homepage, so I visit like a bajillion (also a math thing) times per day? Is this an example of the skewed statistics that [insert partisan talk show host] keeps warning me about?

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Search Engine Basics – Part One, What Search Engines Are Important?

I get a lot of questions about search engine optimization (SEO), and with good reason. A recent competitive analysis found that over 50% of prospective students conducted an internet search during the course of their evaluation of different MBA programs. Not only that, but this method of research was the largest percentage of any other communications channel. Let me repeat this by yelling on the internet: THE LARGEST PERCENTAGE OF ANY OTHER COMMUNICATIONS CHANNEL.

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Business blogs are important

Why do I need a blog? Aren’t they just a tool for armchair politicos and people who want to post pictures of their cat?

While there are plenty of those sorts of blogs, there are plenty of reasons to blog in the corporate world. Heck, you’re reading one right now! In Why business blogs are important, you can read all about the reasons to blog.

Some of the reasons include knowledge transfer among employees (best practices and the like), to develop stronger customer relationships (with, oh I don’t know, alumni and prospective students), and to attract the best employees (hey, these folks are experts, I want to work for them!).

It’s a good read. Another good read is The Artful Manager, a blog by the Bolz Center’s own Andrew Taylor. If you were wondering, “what kind of blog should I have?” then you should read Andrew’s blog and see a master at work.

New Report: Nearly 50 MM Americans Create Web Content

That’s right, 50,000,000! That’s according to the Pew & American Life Project.

The Web is becoming more participatory and users seem to be very willing to contribute. From the article:

“[The Web is] shifting now to user-generated content; it shows people engaging with the Internet in a number of different ways in their lives,” said John Horrigan

Even more salient for the higher ed market:

“Online content comes more often from younger people”

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